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In this week’s magazine | How Islamic is the Islamic State?

Cover Story: "How Islamic is Islamic State?"Mehdi Hasan argues that the Quran cannot be blamed for violent political extremism

Plus

The NS Interview: Xan Rice speaks to the Labour MP and former army officer Dan Jarvis about a "truly representative" parliament.

Helen Lewis makes a modest proposal to turn parliament into 364 affordable flats and make our MPs decamp to Hull.

The Politics Column: George Eaton writes that, in the struggle over housing,the Tories' blind spots have given Labour the advantage.

First Thoughts: Peter Wilby on hacking at the Mirror and his Tory nightmare.

Cover Story: How Islamic is Islamic State?

In a wide-ranging report, Mehdi Hasan writes that Islamic State's motives are political, not religious.

Asking if Isis is "a recognisably 'Islamic' movement" with "recruits motivated by religious fervour and faith", Hasan consults a range of experts, including the forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman, who has spent years trying to understand the extremist mindset. Sageman tells Hasan that it isn't religious faith but a "sense of emotional and moral outrage" which propels people to venture into war zones, and notes that today "Orwell would be [considered as foreign fighter like] a jihadi".

"Religion has a role but it is a role of justification. It's not why they do this [or] why young people go there."

Isis members, he says, are using religion to advance a political vision, rather than using politics to advance a religious vision. "To give themselves a bit more legitimacy, they use Islam as their justification. It's not about religion, it's about identity . . . You identify with the victims, [with] the guys being killed by your enemies."

Hasan speaks to Richard Barrett, the former director of global counterterrorism operations for MI6, who subsequently led the al-Qaeda and Taliban monitoring team at the United Nations. He says that although we "should not underestimate the extent of their belief", Isis is "mostly to do with the search for identity" and "belonging", rather than religion:

"The Islamic State offers all that and empowers the individual within a collective. It does not judge and accepts all with no concern about their past. This can be very appealing for people who think that they washed up on the wrong shore."

Hasan also interviews the former militant Mubin Shaikh, who explains how studying Islam helped him leave his violent views behind:

Shaikh argues, "The claim that Isis is 'Islamic' because it superficially uses Islamic sources is ridiculous, because the Islamic sources themselves say that those who do so [manifest Islam superficially] are specifically un-Islamic."

Hasan concludes:

Religion plays little, if any, role in the radicalisation process, as Sageman and countless experts testify. It is an excuse, rather than a reason. [. . .] To claim that Isis is Islamic is egregiously inaccurate and empirically unsustainable, not to mention insulting to the 1.6 billion non-violent adherents of Islam across the planet. Above all else, it is dangerous and self-defeating, as it provides Baghdadi and his minions with the propaganda prize and recruiting tool that they most crave.

The NS Interview: Dan Jarvis

Xan Rice meets the Labour MP Dan Jarvis and they discuss his time in Afghanistan, his role as a shadow minister, and his problems with the laziness of some of today's politicians:

"I remember on my first day in the House of Commons [7 March 2011] a Conservative MP said to me: 'The thing that you need to learn about this place is that it is only really a part-time job.' I was pretty stunned to hear that and it's completely not the case. You can potter around and do it as a part-time job if you want, but to do it effectively requires a huge amount of effort. I think people deserve that. I am not making any comment about whether I am effective or not. I think people will see that I put the work in."

Jarvis also expresses his dislike for the "political pantomime" of Prime Minister's Questions:

"When I go round the schools I cannot justify that level of behaviour to kids who see it and ask me about it. Some people say it makes it more of a spectacle and fewer people would watch if it was not that sort of confrontational environment. I don't really buy that."

Jarvis adds that he has an issue with the number of career politicians in parliament, as "the public wants more people with life experience". He also sees this as partly a representation issue:

"There is an over-representation of people [in parliament] who have been to public schools. That is a fact of life that we should seek to address.

"It's not to say we have not got exceptional people who went to public schools who can do exceptional things. But we need a parliament that is truly representative of the public that it is there to serve."

George Eatoninterviews Tim Farron

As the Liberal Democrat activists' darling, Tim Farron MP, launches his re-election campaign in the Lake District, he talks to George Eaton about the future of his party. Farron still shows a great deal of admiration for the Lib Dem leader, praising Nick Clegg "so fulsomely that he is moved to tears":

"I'll tell you the thing I am most proud of, most proud of, that nearly nobody knows about, is that there are nearly 3,000 children of asylum-seekers who are not under lock and key now because of what Nick Clegg did with his popularity.

"I hear Nick Clegg being attacked regularly; if you want to know the integrity of somebody, it's that he spends his political capital, gets nothing for it and makes people's lives better. That's a man with integrity."

Of the number of seats the Lib Dems seem likely to lose, he says:

"I've got in my head what I think is a number. There are various sets of numbers, which you think are acceptable, disastrous, brilliant and more shades in between. I was talking about 1997 before: that was our leap forward from being an outsider party to a main-player party. We need to be nearer that '97 result [46 seats] than, shall we say, the results that came before it and that's as close as I'll get to giving you a number."

Despite that, Farron insists:

"We are absolutely competitive in all the places we've been traditionally competitive in." But he adds: "A major job for us, on day one after the election, is to begin rebuilding everywhere else; you have to protect the citadels first and then we can go out and repopulate the plains."

Helen Lewis: A modest proposal - let's turn the Houses of Parliament into 364 affordable flats and make our MPs decamp to Hull

For her Out of the Ordinary column, Helen Lewis writes that when it comes to the Palace of Westminster:

. . . the laudable urge to preserve our history has clotted into an unhealthy attachment to the outdated and antiquated. Any attempt to drag parliament into the 20th century, let alone the 21st, is treated by a certain cadre of MPs as a heresy akin to taking a leak on the Bayeux Tapestry.

She observes that these archaic ideals are visible in the architecture of the palace:

Woven into the very fabric of Westminster are assumptions about who the building - and, by extension, our democracy - is intended to serve. The sashes to hang your sword in the cloakroom may be a quaint relic of an age long gone, but the lack of convenient disabled access and the shortage of ladies' loos in the old palace are daily reminders that parliament wasn't built with those groups in mind.

Lewis argues that modernisation is a must for modern democracy, and concludes with the proposal by the campaign group Generation Rent, which has "semi-flippantly suggested that the palace could be turned into 364 affordable flats for hard-up Londoners, and "Parliament could be shipped off to somewhere like Hull".

It won't happen, of course. There will be enough trouble trying to persuade MPs to move out temporarily while £3bn of essential repair is done to the building: most would prefer that the work be done around them, even though this will cost more. There is also much sniffing about a new education centre turning parliament into a "tourist attraction", as if many of those tourists aren't the voters they are elected to represent. The irony is that, if the Commons does crumble into the Thames, it will be largely because the ultra-traditionalists resisted any kind of modernisation for so long.

The Politics Column: George Eaton

The NS political editor, George Eaton, writes that in the struggle over housing the Tories' blind spots have given Labour the advantage:

On the wall of Ed Miliband's office is a 1945 Labour poster promising "a non-stop drive to provide a good home for every family". For the opposition leader, it is a permanent reminder of the need to emulate this crusade. The issue of housing is playing a greater role at this general election than at any other in recent history. Between 1992 and 2010, the subject was consigned to the lowly rung occupied by agriculture, energy and the arts. Once asked why New Labour devoted so little attention to housing in government, the former cabinet minister Hazel Blears candidly replied that no one was interested enough.

They are now.

He writes that "unlike the Conservatives", Labour has "recognised the economic reality that, even with state assistance, property will remain prohibitively expensive for many". The party's pledges to cap rent increases and ban letting agents from charging fees to tenants should win it votes, while the Conservatives, Eaton says, "have remained largely mute on the subject."

He concludes:

In future elections, housing will rank alongside the economy, immigration and the NHS as an issue of supreme salience. That Labour enjoys a convincing lead in this area is cause for optimism among the party. As headline polls suggest the Tories may have achieved the hitherto elusive "crossover" required for election victory, it is one the opposition must exploit now.

Plus

Geoff Dyer on Raymond Williams.

Peter Wilby on his Tory nightmare.

Hannah Rosefield on Miranda July.

The Diary: Stefan Buczacki on the pleasures of riddling, Hitler's phone number and another BBC solecism.

Leo Robson on Tom McCarthy and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Will Self: Our statues will outlast us - so let's think twice before making
any more naff public art.

MP Michelle Thomson's full speech on rape at 14: "I am a survivor"

On Thursday, the independent MP for Edinburgh West Michelle Thomson used a debate marking the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to describe her own experience of rape. Thomson, 51, said she wanted to break the taboo among her generation about speaking about the subject.

MPs listening were visibly moved by the speech, and afterwards Thomson tweeted she was "overwhelmed" by the response.

Here is her speech in full:

I am going to relay an event that happened to me many years ago. I want to give a very personal perspective to help people, both in this place and outside, understand one element of sexual violence against women.

When I was 14, I was raped. As is common, it was by somebody who was known to me. He had offered to walk me home from a youth event. In those days, everybody walked everywhere - it was quite common. It was early evening. It was not dark. I was wearing— I am imagining and guessing—jeans and a sweatshirt. I knew my way around where I lived - I was very comfortable - and we went a slightly differently way, but I did not think anything of it. He told me that he wanted to show me something in a wooded area. At that point, I must admit that I was alarmed. I did have a warning bell, but I overrode that warning bell because I knew him and, therefore, there was a level of trust in place. To be honest, looking back at that point, I do not think I knew what rape was. It was not something that was talked about. My mother never talked to me about it, and I did not hear other girls or women talking about it.

It was mercifully quick and I remember first of all feeling surprise, then fear, then horror as I realised that I quite simply could not escape, because obviously he was stronger than me. There was no sense, even initially, of any sexual desire from him, which, looking back again, I suppose I find odd. My senses were absolutely numbed, and thinking about it now, 37 years later, I cannot remember hearing anything when I replay it in my mind. As a former professional musician who is very auditory, I find that quite telling. I now understand that your subconscious brain—not your conscious brain—decides on your behalf how you should respond: whether you take flight, whether you fight or whether you freeze. And I froze, I must be honest.

Afterwards I walked home alone. I was crying, I was cold and I was shivering. I now realise, of course, that that was the shock response. I did not tell my mother. I did not tell my father. I did not tell my friends. And I did not tell the police. I bottled it all up inside me. I hoped briefly—and appallingly—that I might be pregnant so that that would force a situation to help me control it. Of course, without support, the capacity and resources that I had within me to process it were very limited.

I was very ashamed. I was ashamed that I had “allowed this to happen to me”. I had a whole range of internal conversations: “I should have known. Why did I go that way? Why did I walk home with him? Why didn’t I understand the danger? I deserved it because I was too this, too that.” I felt that I was spoiled and impure, and I really felt revulsion towards myself.

Of course, I detached from the child that I had been up until then. Although in reality, at the age of 14, that was probably the start of my sexual awakening, at that time, remembering back, sex was “something that men did to women”, and perhaps this incident reinforced that early belief.​
I briefly sought favour elsewhere and I now understand that even a brief period of hypersexuality is about trying to make sense of an incident and reframing the most intimate of acts. My oldest friends, with whom I am still friends, must have sensed a change in me, but because I never told them they did not know of the cause. I allowed myself to drift away from them for quite a few years. Indeed, I found myself taking time off school and staying at home on my own, listening to music and reading and so on.

I did have a boyfriend in the later years of school and he was very supportive when I told him about it, but I could not make sense of my response - and it is my response that gives weight to the event. I carried that guilt, anger, fear, sadness and bitterness for years.

When I got married 12 years later, I felt that I had a duty tell my husband. I wanted him to understand why there was this swaddled kernel of extreme emotion at the very heart of me, which I knew he could sense. But for many years I simply could not say the words without crying—I could not say the words. It was only in my mid-40s that I took some steps to go and get help.

It had a huge effect on me and it fundamentally - and fatally - undermined my self-esteem, my confidence and my sense of self-worth. Despite this, I am blessed in my life: I have been happily married for 25 years. But if this was the effect of one small, albeit significant, event in my life stage, how must it be for those women who are carrying it on a day-by-day basis?

I thought carefully about whether I should speak about this today, and it was people’s intake of breath and the comment, “What? You’re going to talk about this?”, that motivated me to do it, because there is still a taboo about sharing this kind of information. Certainly for people of my generation, it is truly shocking to talk in public about this sort of thing.

As has been said, rape does not just affect the woman; it affects the family as well. Before my mother died early of cancer, I really wanted to tell her, but I could not bring myself to do it. I have a daughter and if something happened to her and she could not share it with me, I would be appalled. It was possibly cowardly, but it was an act of love that meant that I protected my mother.

As an adult, of course I now know that rape is not about sex at all - it is all about power and control, and it is a crime of violence. I still pick up on when the myths of rape are perpetuated form a male perspective: “Surely you could have fought him off. Did you scream loudly enough?” And the suggestion by some men that a woman is giving subtle hints or is making it up is outrageous. Those assumptions put the woman at the heart of cause, when she should be at the heart of effect. A rape happens when a man makes a decision to hurt someone he feels he can control. Rapes happen because of the rapist, not because of the victim.

We women in our society have to stand up for each other. We have to be courageous. We have to call things out and say where things are wrong. We have to support and nurture our sisters as we do with our sons. Like many women of my age, I have on occasion encountered other aggressive actions towards me, both in business and in politics. But one thing that I realise now is that I am not scared and he was. I am not scared. I am not a victim. I am a survivor.

Julia Rampen is the editor of The Staggers, The New Statesman's online rolling politics blog. She was previously deputy editor at Mirror Money Online and has worked as a financial journalist for several trade magazines.